booking

[Nichols, Wendalyn]

I thank Jesse for his continued commitment to the HDAS and to refuting the
inaccuracies that are flying about in the wake of the regrettable Wall
Street Journal article. Rebuttals are ultimately self-defeating, because
they draw more attention to a difficult situation, and fail to persuade
those who have chosen to believe that there are good guys and bad guys in
all this. It is also not our policy to discuss private issues in a public
forum, which is why almost all the information in that article all came from
one source, the agent John Thornton, with only minimal and reluctant
participation from Dr. Lighter.

We have therefore chosen to remain largely silent about this matter.
However, the members of this list are people whose scholarship I respect and
whose continuing support I would request, so I will state for the record
that Random House remains committed to finishing this project. Financial
support from any angels out there would be most welcome; the original NEH
grant for what was meant to be a one-volume work has long since run out, and
since we are a commercial entity, we are not eligible for other grants.

(And Barry, if you'd like to help, perhaps you could spearhead the fund
drive you suggested a while back, or find volunteers who would be willing to
key an estimated 150,000 hand-written cards into a database for free. I'm
actually only half joking.)

Wendalyn Nichols
Editorial Director
Random House Reference

-----Original Message-----
From: Jesse Sheidlower [mailto:jester at PANIX.COM]
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2000 5:27 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: booking


George Thompson wrote:
>
> HDAS (I happily follow the lead of Jesse Sheidlower in dropping the
> initials of the infamous publishing house formerly associated with
> this dictionary)

Longterm ADS-L members, or those using the archives, will know that I
have always referred to the _Random House Historical Dictionary
of American Slang_ as the HDAS. Also, Random House is still associated
with it.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED